Hello, everyone. This is Parker Russell. I’m the new head of International Securitization here at BMO Capital Markets’ base in Chicago.

In the last 15 years, the Securitization Group has been very successful in the esoteric asset space in the US. As financial markets have become increasingly global, many of our clients have said that they’d like to see our support overseas as well.

BMO Capital Markets’ Securitization Group has responded with a new team that focuses exclusively on global opportunities. The group serves both our own domestic clients expanding overseas, and countries where BMO has strong historical ties – like China. BMO has been in China for nearly 30 years, and has very strong relationships with some of China’s major financial institutions. A few years back, we decided to take our involvement in China one step further by supporting the developing Chinese securitization market.

Getting in early has allowed us to structure and invest alongside strategically important clients. My colleague Harry Tang and Bill Caswell will speak more about opportunities in China, later in this podcast.

Other markets are just as promising. In Latin America, we recently closed a groundbreaking transaction for a finance company whose partner is a client of the Securitization Group here in the States. Right now, we are working on another opportunity that will bring a relatively new asset class to the Mexican market.

There’s tremendous opportunity for securitization in Europe, and we have seen lots of success not only with domestic clients who are expanding overseas, but locally based firms as well.

So if you like what you’ve seen from the US Securitization Group domestically, and wish you could get strong support overseas, you’re in luck. There’s a lot of opportunity out there, and BMO Capital Markets has the creative solutions to help you seize it.

If you have any questions, please contact me at 312-461-4611. Thanks for listening.

Thank you Parker. Hi, this is Bill Caswell, I’m a VP in BMO Capital Markets’ US Securitization Group, focused on the international market.

As Parker said, there is a lot of opportunity the markets around the world. And I’d like to take a minute to talk about what we are finding in one of them – China.

The securitization market is developing at a cautious, almost measured pace, but within a decade, we expect it will be the third-largest in the world, behind the US and Europe.

BMO Capital Markets invested in three of the first five government-mandated transactions issued in the interbank market in late 2005 and early 2006. BMO Capital Markets was the only foreign bank to participate in these transactions.

The first government-mandated transactions were for bank assets, including non-performing loans. This makes sense, given that the banking industry owns in excess of 30 trillion yuan of financial assets – almost 3.8 trillion US dollars.

We think the second wave of government transactions will also be for bank assets. However, we are beginning to see the emergence of additional asset classes, such as CMBS and more NPL transactions with improved structures.

We also anticipate that there will be reforms for another method of securitization designed for corporate assets, known as SAMP. These should improve issues related to tax, bankruptcy remoteness and SPE’s. Reforms like these would really open the market and give domestic Chinese corporations alternative financing.

This second wave of government mandated transactions should come sometime in 2007, bringing improved structures using derivatives – which will be a first for China.

The amount of opportunity just waiting to be developed in China is staggering, and in anticipation of the market’s further growth, we are looking to expand our dedicated Chinese securitization team. We are also positioned to capitalize on cross-border opportunities as they begin to develop.

I hope this short overview helps, and if you have any questions about securitization in China, please contact me at 312-461-7586.